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Now and then you're transported to a different time and place. No,
I'm not talking about being captured by space aliens out of Roswell,
N.M., or anything. It's been a stressful week, but all the stresses
have been minor -- more like being nibbled to death by ducks than
wiped out by a meteor from outer space, where my head is most of the
time anyway.

I do remember at some point -- Tuesday morning? Wednesday
afternoon? - walking across a college campus after I gave my little
talk there. It was a lovely respite from work. The day was bathed in
sunshine, spring was just around the corner, everything had
unnaturally slowed, and events conspired to lay out one restful scene
after another -- young people studying, a couple playing Frisbee,
winter fading ... .

It was like one of those college recruitment films. Idyllic. You
could almost hear the music in the background instead of the traffic.
It was a nice change from office buildings, cranes, discordant sounds
and carbon monoxide.

The mind went into idle, and I was a student back on the Centenary
College campus in the South of the 1950s. For a moment everything
seemed the same as it was then, including my thoughts. Fats Domino was
almost audible in the background. I was struck by how energetic I
felt, like a scientist examining his younger self.

For some reason I could feel none of the angst every college
student goes through, though I knew I had. Memory can do that when it
is kind, screening out the debris and leaving a sweet core. And this
campus, too, seemed well cared-for, with its grass tended, sidewalks
swept, terraces sloping and clear signs in new, bright, legible
letters ... as if the whole place were a color photograph. Things hit
you like that sometimes, and you're surprised by the beauty of a
little slice of the world.

That's when I began to notice them, like obstructions in your field
of vision. They occurred regularly just off the path, like chunks of
metal left over from some industrial process. They had shape but no
meaning, at least to me. They seemed artifacts of some other age, past
or future, but certainly not the present. They were intrusions. They
had nothing to do with the here and now, with this golden morning or
shining afternoon, whatever it was.

But these metallic accumulations, some dull, some shiny, others
rusted, kept popping up across campus, like outsize clockwork thrown
aside by a giant hand, scattered over the land like occasional tumors.
The sun seemed to go behind a cloud every time one appeared. It was
like traversing a visual obstacle course. Suddenly, I was no longer
young and striding, but back on a very urban campus. The color had
drained from the scene.

That's when I woke up and realized what these things were: They
were sculptures.

Art.

But what kind? Student projects? Donations? Leftovers? First tries
that didn't make the final cut? Things put on display out of a sense
of obligation, the way you put a loved child's pictures up on the
fridge?

But these things weren't lovable. Or temporary. They were made to
last and last and, alas, last.

The sun-starved grass would wither under them over the years, along
with the souls of passersby.

As still another rusting pile of abandoned auto mufflers appeared
across the way -- or was it a gigantic toaster? -- it inspired only
one reaction: Why? To what end? Why do we do this? Is there some kind
of law that says we have to disfigure our public spaces, and ruin a
perfectly good walk?

Well, yes, there is.

Certain cities have passed laws requiring that developers who want
public funds for their projects have to set aside 1 percent of their
budget for Public Art.

The law doesn't say what kind of art it has to be -- good, bad or
indifferent. Classical, mod, pop or outre. Doubtless the usual group
of experts is appointed to certify it as capital-A Art. After that,
there may be no way of removing the stuff short of an earthquake. For
the first time, I thought of the New Madrid fault line as a blessing.
PB

The other day, according to a news item out of Philadelphia, a
developer there had objected to the requirement that he spend his 1
percent on art. It seems he had already dedicated the pier adjoining
his riverside project as a public park, and he didn't want to scatter
clumps of duly certified Public Art around his project.

Sounds reasonable. So naturally the developer's request was
opposed. Because, according to somebody with the Greater Philadelphia
Cultural Alliance and arts police, granting this one guy a waiver
would set a precedent that might affect ``the rest of the country.''
My heart leapt in hope.

It's not the requirement that a certain percentage of public
investment be set aside for public art that troubles. It seems only
fair -- an act of stewardship for the future. Just look at the WPA
buildings that still ornament small towns across America, a reminder
that public art can be both useful and assuring, utilitarian and
comely, elevated and elevating.

By all means, save public art, especially from those in charge of
deciding what it is. But how? Maybe all it would take is one simple
requirement. Call it, if you please, Greenberg's Law:

Any piece of art bought or erected by the public must be
superior to the bare, beautiful, light-filled space it would occupy.

That's a high standard. But holding to it would (a) reduce the
amount of all the oh-so-advanced litter that now clutters our public
spaces, (b) help us appreciate the simple beauty of what it would
replace, and (c) raise artistic standards immensely.